[00:16] Meg: Welcome to Desperately Seeking the 80s.

[00:18] Jessica: I am Meg, and I am Jessica. And Meg and I have been friends since 1982. We got through middle school and high school together here in New York City, where we still live and where we

[00:29] Meg: podcast about New York city in the 80s. I do rich ripped from the headlines.

[00:33] Jessica: And I do pop culture.

[00:35] Meg: Don't be upset.

[00:36] Jessica: Oh, God. Is that really how we're beginning today?

[00:40] Meg: There's been a slight correction about the Lorne Michael years of snl.

[00:47] Jessica: And I, I. You know what? I'm not an expert. Bring me the correction.

[00:51] Meg: And actually, when this person talked to me about it, I was like, if that's called a correction, please. But it is important to note.

[01:00] Jessica: You're like, are you aware of the other bullshit she has spread spouted on this thing? She rarely knows what she's talking about.

[01:07] Meg: I meant it was just such a slight thing, but it. I, I see why it was important because you were mentioning, like, Julia Louis Dreyfus and other women in the 80s who were on Saturday Night Live and how they played. They fit into roles, stereotypes of some kind. And those were actually the Dick Eppersol years. So it wasn't Lorne's fault, is the point. And this person wasn't even a Lorne Michaels fan. So I just.

[01:37] Jessica: Note taken, Note taken.

[01:39] Meg: Not a big deal.

[01:41] Jessica: And you know what? It was still Saturday Night Live.

[01:44] Meg: Yes, absolutely.

[01:46] Jessica: I don't mind being corrected.

[01:49] Meg: On the bright side, there was no

[01:52] Jessica: bad side, There was no dark side. But what's the brighter?

[01:55] Meg: Okay, the brighter side.

[01:56] Jessica: And what's the. That was neutral. I'm gonna give it a neutral. So what's the bright side?

[02:00] Meg: I'm so glad that you take that as neutral. Neutral. Meg Spector reached out and she was so touched by our shout out about her show. She's like, that is so sweet. And she posted about it on her Instagram. That is so very nice of her.

[02:15] Jessica: Lovely.

[02:16] Meg: And she said that she and her boyfriend have written a screenplay about the cannibal of Tompkins Square Park. And I told her, did you know that his lawyer open KGB bar? And she was like, what?

[02:34] Jessica: Oh, my God. Wait, they're doing. I need to be involved in this. Like, please call me.

[02:42] Meg: You need to meet Meg Spector. Come to the Spectacular.

[02:46] Jessica: I, Meg Spector. Meg. Meg 1 and Meg 2. I'll see you there.

[03:02] Meg: As you know, it was very common in the 80s to wear brands on your.

[03:08] Jessica: Is this my engagement question?

[03:10] Meg: On your clothing, on your caps.

[03:13] Jessica: Oh, yes.

[03:14] Meg: On your bags, on your watches. What brands did you wear, if at all.

[03:22] Jessica: As a human who was alive. I was wearing brands. Do you mean, like, with labels?

[03:25] Meg: Yeah, that's what I mean. Like Benetton.

[03:28] Jessica: Nothing. I'm gonna really sound like a bluestocking right now, but I've never liked the look of a label. I think it's like you look like a Formula one race car, but remember.

[03:44] Meg: Yeah, I agree with you.

[03:45] Jessica: I did not have. I had lots of Benetton clothing, but none of. I never had the rugby shirt with Benetton across the tits. I never had. I just never had logo anything. The only thing that I can think of that I would wear that would be really recognizable was a swatch. True that. Even that one I had.

[04:07] Meg: And probably a Lacoste shirt.

[04:09] Jessica: Yes, I would wear a Lacoste with the little alligator, but I never did, like, you know, like Ralph Lauren with the polo. You know, like the oversized. It was never. I don't know, it's just not my thing. Mm. Did you.

[04:24] Meg: No.

[04:25] Jessica: Okay, well, where. Where are we going from here? We're both like labels. Well, so where are we going with this?

[04:34] Meg: You will see very soon. My sources are the New York Times and a documentary called Born to Kill.

[04:42] Jessica: Why am I not surprised that's the name of one of your sources?

[04:48] Meg: In 1983, 27 year old David Tai joined the Flying Dragons, one of the largest gangs in chinatown since the 70s. The Flying Dragons favorite activities included extortion, kidnapping, murder, racketeering, gambling, prostitution, and eventually heroin. And they protected their turf by any means necessary. But whatever happens in Chinatown stays in Chinatown. So seriously, though, the residents there didn't love the Chinese gangs, but they were used to them. They knew to pay their extortion money if necessary and otherwise avoid any trouble. The Flying Dragons were formed by immigrants from Hong Kong, and they stayed very insular, which kept them protected from infiltrators trying to know their business and kept them safe from the police. So unlike maybe the Italian mobile, it was just more difficult because you had to be from Hong Kong or from the people whose parents were from Hong Kong. And there was a language situation, and the police, they didn't understand the language. So it was just very difficult to break in if you wanted to catch them doing something naughty.

[06:08] Jessica: But wait, I'll bet someone did.

[06:11] Meg: The NYPD set up something called the Jade Squad.

[06:17] Jessica: Stop it.

[06:18] Meg: And they were charged with dealing with the Chinatown gangs, but they had a tough time of it. Chinatown, going back in time, had been established by a surge of Chinese immigrants in the 1850s. So that's it's been there for a while. That is established and had retained its native languages, food and culture in its homes, businesses, and even its banks. So when you walked into Chinatown, it was like you were walking into a different country. But our friend David Tai, he was Vietnamese. He'd grown up in Saigon during the Vietnam War, which you can imagine was dicey as hell to make money. As a young guy, he had a lot of dealings with American GIs who were on the hunt for drugs. And many of these American GIs had labeled their helmets with born to kill. When Saigon fell, David, whose given name was Tai Tho Hong, was able to get to America along with many Vietnamese refugees. And he was placed in a house for boys in Indiana sponsored by the Lutheran Church. But he didn't stay long.

[07:34] Jessica: How old was he when he got there?

[07:36] Meg: 18.

[07:37] Jessica: Okay.

[07:38] Meg: In May 1976, David fled the home with $150 in his pocket and hopped on a Greyhound bus headed to New York. When he got here, he picked up a lot of odd jobs, as one does, including washing dishes at the Rainbow Room. And on the side, in his tiny apartment in Hell's Kitchen, he figured out how to counterfeit watches. He had printing stamps that could emblazon Rolex and Cartier on less fancy watches. He also enrolled at nyu, where he met Da Nang, also a Vietnamese refugee, and they got married. Now, when she got pregnant, they both dropped out of nyu, and David bundled up his watches and headed to Canal street to make some much needed money. And that's when he hooked up with the Flying Dragons. Now, like I said, the Flying Dragons were Chinese, and they weren't about to let a Vietnamese guy be a full member, no way. But they also had a lot of dirty work that they didn't mind farming out. A lot of Vietnamese were coming into the city, and they weren't all that welcome in Chinatown. They sure as hell didn't want them to live there. Now, remember, the banks and the social services and the landlords only spoke Mandarin and Cantonese. And many of the Vietnamese refugees were boat people who came with no support system at all. No families. Most were desperate young people, mostly men. And the Flying Dragons used them for the most dangerous crimes. David was one of these guys, but he also had his watch business on the side, which was thriving. And word spread amongst the Vietnamese all over the city that David Tai was a good guy to know. David was able to give other Vietnamese advice and money and sometimes even a place to live. And eventually he realized he didn't need the Flying Dragons. Anymore. He had his own gang. There were a bunch of small gangs of Vietnamese youth all over the city in little pockets, and they were all going by different names. But in June 1989, David Tai had the social capital to host a meeting in a Japanese restaurant in Manhattan where all all the small Vietnamese gangs gathered. He announced at that meeting that all the small gangs would now coalesce under a single leader, David Tai. And under a single name, Born to Kill. Gang members got tattoos of the initials BTK and a coffin and three candles which represented that they were willing to die. This is kind of interesting. Unlike the Chinese gang members, these kids had grown up in war and they had no family ties. They were scary, violent. They had nothing to lose, and they didn't play by the rules. The Flying Dragons and the other established Chinese Chinatown gangs had a code established by Hip Singh Tongue, which was a criminal fraternal labor organization dating back to 1905 that kept an eye on everything that went down in Chinatown. Benny Ng was the Chutsuk, or godfather of Hip Sing Tong, and he ordered a sit down or a Kang sue with David. Benny figured he would offer David Canal street if he would tell his BTK members to leave the rest of Chinatown alone. But David had no intention of playing by Chinese rules and didn't even show up to the meeting. And he could afford to. In 1988 alone, he made $13 million from selling counterfeit Rolexes.

[11:51] Jessica: That does not surprise me.

[11:54] Meg: Members of Born to Kill dressed well. They were mostly teenagers and wore dark sunglasses and spiky hair with black suits. They didn't mind being identified. Their leader, David, wore silk shirts and tailored sports coats and soft leather loafers. On August 5, 1989, David was standing with colleagues in front of Ph Hanoi, a restaurant on Canal street, when two Flying Dragons walked up and started talking smack. Insulting btk. One of them spat on the ground in front of David.

[12:37] Jessica: I'm feeling very tense. What's going to happen next?

[12:41] Meg: David went into Ph Hanoi, grabbed a couple guns, handed them to a couple BTK members, and those guys went out onto the street and in broad daylight, shot the two Flying Dragons. One in the head, the other in the heart. Dozens of witnesses saw the entire event, but by the time the police showed up, Canal street was deserted and all the stores closed up.

[13:08] Jessica: Jesus.

[13:10] Meg: David Tai was eventually brought down by the ATF thanks to an undercover informant. And he was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder, murder, attempted murder, robbery, racketeering, and extortion. And he was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences plus 43 years.

[13:29] Jessica: So goodbye, David. Tai.

[13:31] Meg: Yeah, sorry, David, we will not be rubbing elbows with you in the near future.

[13:35] Jessica: He does not walk amongst us. No, he does not. No.

[13:39] Meg: But you know what? David made his mark. And counterfeit merchandise is still big business on Canal. I found this one funny story. One cool story. I guess there was this private investigator named Dempster Leach.

[13:56] Jessica: Get out of town.

[13:57] Meg: I know.

[13:57] Jessica: Really? What a. I mean, that's a great. That's like a Damon Runyon kind of character.

[14:02] Meg: So Fendi hired him in the 80s to track down the fakes, Right. And he, you know, went to Canal street, tried to figure it out, and he described how he would chase BTK members through the canal. Catacombs.

[14:20] Jessica: What's that?

[14:21] Meg: It's a thing, a maze of tunnels under the street, and they would run through. The BTK guys would run through fake walls, down trap doors, into sub basements, past makeshift underground apartments and assembly lines. Isn't that crazy? And that stuff is still there. I don't know what it's being used for, but isn't that nuts?

[14:44] Jessica: Well, no, it's fascinating because obviously we know that Canal street is named Canal street because there was a canal there. Of course.

[14:52] Meg: So there's something.

[14:53] Jessica: There are lots of streets in New York City that have names that are like, you know, river or, you know, stream or like, something where you're like, well, that's weird, because there isn't that there. Yes, there is. It's just below it.

[15:07] Meg: It's under the street.

[15:08] Jessica: So Canal street must have had. Why, whatever. Yeah. However they buil on top of it. I mean, obviously, trapdoors and fake walls, like, I have no idea. But.

[15:18] Meg: But the point is that there's this whole area under the street level that is amazing.

[15:24] Jessica: And having access to that water, even if it's partly a sewer or whatever, but having access to that must be incredibly valuable to the city. So why not have that all there?

[15:37] Meg: Isn't that nuts, though?

[15:38] Jessica: It is. It's amazing. Like, European cities, there are catacombs. There are weird. What are they called? Ossuaries, where bones are collected and displayed. And we don't think of New York as that because America is so young. But this city actually has so many layers of development. And the architecture. Not architecture, the archeology of this place is ongoing. So that kind of stuff is like, if you're into it. And I don't know if, like, the Bowery Boys do this on their podcast or who does it. There are tours of, you know, the depths of the actual island of Manhattan. It's very cool.

[16:22] Meg: I mean, we've talked about the tunnel people, right?

[16:27] Jessica: And most of the tunnel people are part of subway and transit, you know, stuff. And I'm.

[16:34] Meg: And shut down railroads, right.

[16:37] Jessica: And so there's all kinds of stuff. But yeah, it's worth it. It's really, really cool.

[16:41] Meg: I just also loved just the idea. I mean, you know, people go for dim sum in Chinatown now, and karaoke for that matter. It's a place to go hang out. Chinatown nowadays. But back in the 80s, it was kind of impermeable. I mean, you went there to get your knockoff watches, but it's not like you were gonna be all that welcomed going into a traditional Chinese restau in Chinatown as recently as the 80s.

[17:08] Jessica: Interesting. I can't say anything other about the restaurant thing, other than my memories of going to what I'm quite sure even though they were billed as not being American and touristy, were to the proprietors. But you just made me remember I had a birthday party when I was like 10 where it was lunch in Chinatown. And then there were all of those little tchotchke stores, remember, like with all of the little like Chinese whatever. And I remember my parents gave every girl like $5. And you could go get like a bajillion things, you know, at one of these stores, like a tiny fan and a little tiny tea set and all that stuff. And the fake stuff I recall, and this is really digging into my faulty memory, but people would come in from New Jersey and Long island on Canal street buying sprees and people would know, like, this area is where you get this better counterfeit bags. This is the place to get the counterfeit watches. Like it was, it became.

[18:25] Meg: My cousin, a clear industry, came in from Atlanta and did very much that. And she knew what corner to go to and all of that. And I just sort of watched a

[18:37] Jessica: little bit from afar because of Internet. So a very good friend of mine who loves a good handbag and or shoes found someone on Instagram, I think, or like something online. And it's this guy in China using really good quality leather, like really good stuff, doing incredibly high end knockoffs. So like it's. The knockoff could cost 500 or $600, but the bag would normally be 3,000. And that guy's business boomed like it was insane. I have to ask her if he's still in business or what happened. And I don't. And I'm quite sure that he was putting labels in, you know, so maybe he was like doing One letter off, like that was a thing. Do you remember that? Or.

[19:29] Meg: Why even do one letter off if you're not going to get caught?

[19:32] Jessica: Well, I mean, he was on Instagram, so I would imagine what she did get was so good that it was quite shocking. So I will. I'll follow up with that. I'll ask her about it.

[19:43] Meg: I'm actually going to tell you a story.

[19:45] Jessica: Please do. What happened?

[19:47] Meg: This is so bad. But my dad doesn't listen to the podcast, so it's fine.

[19:49] Jessica: Ugh. Please dish.

[19:51] Meg: So he had a very close friend who I will not name because I don't want to embarrass her publicly. Who gave him a role? No, not a Rolex watch. A Cartier watch. And it was his prize watch. He was so. You know, my father loves luxury items. Blah, blah, blah. Well, there was a Cartier on his corner, and it was a little bit on the fritz, and he went in there to get it fixed, and they took one glance at and said, this is a fake. He was so humiliated.

[20:30] Jessica: That must have really been tough, especially for him. Yeah.

[20:35] Meg: And his whole thing.

[20:36] Jessica: Yeah, no, it was.

[20:37] Meg: It was. It was bad.

[20:38] Jessica: And she never told him? No.

[20:41] Meg: No.

[20:41] Jessica: I wonder if she knew.

[20:43] Meg: She did know because she gave me a Chanel bag once and I found out that very quickly, but I didn't give a crap. I don't care if it's fake, but

[20:54] Jessica: my dad was humiliated. I'm not joking. I cannot even imagine what his response would have been. And I'm imagining this really wide imagining your dad at that time and, like, acting out every single emotion that could possibly have happened. All of them are terrifying.

[21:15] Meg: Especially because he's mostly humiliated in front of people like salespeople or doormen or waiters. Like that. That is a situation for him that is his worst nightmare.

[21:27] Jessica: How fascinating.

[21:29] Meg: That's actually a narcissist thing.

[21:31] Jessica: Is it?

[21:31] Meg: Yeah.

[21:32] Jessica: Why? Explain if. Oh. To. Oh. To be humiliated in front of someone who is socially lower on the ladder.

[21:40] Meg: I'm not sure if it's that. I think it's because you have no personal relationship with them. It's a different sense of humiliation. They. They don't know who you are, so when down on you or they see you for actually who you are. A guy who's got a fake Cartier for some reason, that hits narcissists so much worse than if their children see them. I think it's. It's seeing yourself through somebody else's eyes. And people who you actually have a relationship with, they're not really people. Oh, extensions of yourself.

[22:18] Jessica: I got it. That is so twisted. Wow. Wow.

[22:25] Meg: So complete strangers are more important than people who you actually are close with.

[22:32] Jessica: That's so interesting.

[22:34] Meg: Yeah, it's wacky stuff.

[22:49] Jessica: Okay, so my sources are the New York Times, Politico, and npr. Now, I'm apologizing in advance because we have agreed not to talk about this person on this podcast. But I've been thinking a lot about why I've been really depressed lately and why a lot of people are very depressed. And I've been thinking a lot about how, as New Yorkers, you know, we're always joking, like, I don't live in America. I live on an island off the coast of America. Or, you know, there's the classic New Yorker cartoon. There's New York and then there's la. So I was thinking a lot about how there's a constant amazement at what Trump does. And, like, how can he get away with it? How can this? And how people from New York are always like, he has always done this.

[23:51] Meg: Always.

[23:51] Jessica: This is exactly who he is. And if only other people would have known this, we would never be in this pickle. When we say that, and I know that I've said it on this podcast, it winds up sounding very glib and entitled. Cause it's like, well, we knew and you fucking idiots didn't know, which, well, how would you know, right? There's no way you would have known. It's like, do I know what's happened? What's playing in Peoria? I certainly do not.

[24:20] Meg: We had a front row seats to all the garishness.

[24:25] Jessica: And just because this podcast is all about bizarre overlaps and topic A that we covered suddenly pops up with topic B. I was in my natural state of insomnia, making it worse by scrolling through Instagram a couple of nights ago. And I follow Griffin Dunn.

[24:48] Meg: I love him.

[24:48] Jessica: Who? Right? Like, if you don't love Griffin Dunn, like, there's something profoundly wrong with you. He's sort of like the original Paul Rudd. You know what I mean? Like, he posted an article, like, the full article, the clipping from the village voice from 1980.

[25:06] Meg: Ooh.

[25:07] Jessica: And the caption was, everyone in New York already knew who he was. And that really piqued my interest. So I read that and I then found, like, who else covered this? And of course, like, it was big enough that the New York Times covered it. But then I was looking for other stuff, like, what did we know that others didn't? And so in my research, I found these Three articles that I think really encapsulate. Like, rather than saying, well, we knew, let me say what we knew. Okay. Okay. And I'm gonna start with something that actually came up during the first. His first run for president. And Hillary Clinton brought it up. And this is not the 80s. This is from 1973.

[25:53] Meg: I know what you're gonna talk about.

[25:57] Jessica: So we know that Trump is a scumbag.

[26:01] Meg: Indeed.

[26:02] Jessica: But his dad was the original scumbag.

[26:05] Meg: Also a Nazi.

[26:06] Jessica: Yes, very much so. And that, as you well know, sort of ties into what I'm about to say, that in 1973, there was a lawsuit brought against the Trump Organization for discrimination against black and Hispanic people who try to rent apartments in their buildings in Queens. In Queens. I always. I know that. I know there's. There's just a little something that it's like with Trump, you always want to be like, remember you're from Queens. Remember, you're from Queens. Not that there's anything bad with that.

[26:43] Meg: Nothing wrong.

[26:44] Jessica: But he thinks there is.

[26:45] Meg: I know he's got a chip on his shoulder.

[26:48] Jessica: He's got a chip on his shoulder. So what happened was his racial discrimination was investigated by his old friends, the Justice Department. So I'm bringing this up because these whole. All of these little pieces run so deep. Right. So his need to dismantle everything has more.

[27:15] Meg: It's because they've rhyme and reason calling him out for decades.

[27:20] Jessica: Exactly. And so the Justice Department sued Donald Trump, his dad, Fred, and the Trump Management Company to obtain a settlement. They would promise not to discriminate. It was eventually settled two years later, after Trump tried to sue the Justice Department for $100 million for making false allegations which were not false. And I'll explain why in a second. And the court just threw it out. Clinton had said at the time, Donald started his career back in 1973, being sued by the Justice Department for racial discrimination. He was, at the time, he was 26 years old. He started his career being sued for racial discrimination by the Justice Department because he would not rent apartments in one of his developments to African Americans. And he made sure that the people who worked for him understood that that was the policy. And the way that this was found out was that there were, you know, people who tried to rent it, and then they complained to the city. And there were, at the time. Cause it was the early 70s, there were city organizations that would investigate this. So a black potential renter went to one of the buildings, the super. There was a sign that said apartments for rent. And the super was like, everything's been rented. I'm so sorry. And he's like, but there's a sign here. I just forgot to take it down. And then the white woman went in and was shown the apart and everything was dandy and blah, blah, blah, red handed. And then when the super was pressed about it, he was like, that's what they tell me to do. And that's how all of this happened. There was no wiping that stain off. The only thing that could have diminished that was time. Time and people forgetting. But then in 1980, and this is what Griffin Dunn brought up in 1980, Donald, who's now 30 years old. No, 33. And he's now in charge of his own business. His father's still alive, but Donald's no longer trailing after his father and he has his own buildings to manage. And we've talked about his Park Place building situation where he was.

[29:36] Meg: This is a callback.

[29:37] Jessica: It is indeed, getting people out of, out of apartments. Rent, you know, the rent control. Fuck you. Rent stabilization. Fuck you. I want you out. There were the holdouts. They won. Well, sometimes people don't have other neighbors who are going to really help them. Which was the case for Mary Filon or Filan, who was 74 years old and living in an apartment in Queens that she had lived in for decades. This article was May 4th. May 4th, 1980. She had rented an apartment at 14315 Barkley Avenue in Flushing. For 31 years, she had been a totally model, good, excellent tenant. 18 months prior to the events that I'm about to describe, Mary had a devastating stroke and one side of her body was paralyzed. So getting around and doing the things that she normally did, obviously very difficult. She also made no money. She had very little money. She had a very tiny pension and she had some Social Security, and her rent was about half of what she brought in. And yet Mary paid her rent and she kept all of her rent stubs, all of her check stubs and the rent in an envelope in her apartment.

[31:00] Meg: Yeah.

[31:01] Jessica: And when she was incapacitated, she had a neighbor who would go get money orders for her from her bank and pay the rent on this particular fateful day. Ms. Filon, or Filon, I wish I knew how to pronounce her name. Her attendant, there's like a city agency attendant, like a, you know, a God's love we deliver kind of person.

[31:25] Meg: Sure.

[31:26] Jessica: Comes. Who normally comes to the apartment. She was a little bit late. And then Mary hears the doorbell going maniacally and she thinks oh, my God. Has something happened to someone? She hauls her paralyzed body out of her bed. She answers the door, and in the doorway are three thuggish guys who work for the sheriff's department. They have been told that there is a judgment against her because she did not appear in court and that there had been a summons for her, she did not appear in court, and that she was being evicted, that she had not paid four months rent. January, February, March, and April.

[32:08] Meg: And we know that is not true.

[32:10] Jessica: She in her physically fucked up state, they take every stick of furniture and everything that she has, including the bed she had been lying in, out of the apartment, and they leave her a box to sit on.

[32:26] Meg: Where are her stubs?

[32:28] Jessica: She had her stubs. Everything was put into storage, including the stubs. They took every. She's a little paralyzed, 74 year old woman, and these three thugs cleaned out the apartment. She also never received a summons. Nothing. So this happens. And you know, her neighbor who had been helping her with the rent, you know, like, they go to court, she can't show up. You know, it's all on her behalf. And he's saying, no, you know, I did this, blah, blah, blah. And there is a public outcry about this behavior. The notification was supposed to have been done by Irving Eskenazi, special assistant to Donald Trump. He says there was no rent paid for those months that I just listed and that she was late in paying rent and many times she paid only when threatened with eviction, later determined not true. He said that the Trump Organization was permitted to evict her after she failed to appear in housing court to answer the charge of non payment. As I said, notice that she didn't get. The eviction took place at around noon on April 25th. So this article came out right on the heels of all of this.

[33:44] Meg: Good.

[33:45] Jessica: She describes, you know, what I had just said? This is what they're saying in the article. After the men left, leaving her in an empty apartment, she called her doctor because she was having trouble breathing.

[33:58] Meg: Oh, my God.

[33:59] Jessica: A friend drove her to the nearby Parsons Hospital, where she was being treated for more than a week. Mr. Eskenazi said he had not been aware that she had any ailments. He had not been aware of anything, and that he had not seen her for six years. He said that the Trump Organization offered Mrs. Fillon an apartment in a building for elderly persons. Obviously, after people went insane and they were like, shit, we need to do something. Cause this is a very bad look. And with having to pay rent of about $175 a month. And I think that Mary really sums up New York with her response, which was after hearing the offer, she says, it's in New Jersey. I don't want to live in New Jersey. I don't know anybody there. I'm still trying to find out what happened to Mrs. Filan after that, but that was some seriously bad shiz.

[34:58] Meg: What? She had proof that she had paid rent.

[35:01] Jessica: I'm sorry. Yes, yes. So in a different article, what I found out was that when they went through her things, that envelope, they found it.

[35:09] Meg: Okay. Then it was empty. Oh, they are such bad, bad people. But it's not dissimilar to deporting people

[35:23] Jessica: who you're like, yeah, I think that

[35:25] Meg: they're in a part of the gang. But there's absolutely no evidence that they are. But I'm just gonna say they are, and so we can get rid of them. Okay, great. All right. Anyway, can we change the subject now?

[35:34] Jessica: Well, and that's sort of. That's the topic of the Politico article that I found. And I'm just gonna summarize this for you. And there's so many details to this that I think that it would be a good idea if we post a link to it on Instagram. Cause it's a fascinating read, and it's really incredibly interesting about the legacy of Robert Moses and his development of the city. And, you know, all of the things that Trump has taken lessons from. The whole point of this article is that Trump insists that he never fails because he has a particular talent, which we see over and over again now. And I thought it was worthwhile to bring it up. And the way the reason that he never fails, and this is what all of these, like, lobbyists and. And city government people and other developers and construction people who work with him unanimously say if something goes wrong, he doesn't bat an eyelash. He might seethe privately, but he can pivot like nobody's business. And whatever's in front of him, that is the way out or the better deal, he will go into it so heavily and saying that it was his son. The example from this Politico article was, again, it happened in the 80s. So in 1985, there was a huge, huge swath of land in New York, and he wanted to down on the west side that he wanted to develop and call it Television City. They didn't expand on why it was Television City, except I assume that he wanted broadcasting companies to go in there, along with huge numbers of residents. What's interesting about it is that the number of apartments that he wanted to put in Television City would have been greater than the total number of apartments that his father had ever developed. Right. Oh, God. Anyway, he tries to do this, and the zoning isn't.

[37:52] Meg: My memory is. He wanted it to be too tall.

[37:55] Jessica: Well, no, there's. That was one of the buildings in there.

[37:59] Meg: And that it would cast a shadow over half the island. And people were like, no, correct.

[38:05] Jessica: But that's even the second place. So the first placement of all of this had, like, this ridiculous phallic thing. Because, as we know, as we've been dealing with. With these idiots, you know, with all about the Penis, Jeff fucking Bezos and Bezos. And I still. I don't know why I have a block on how to pronounce his name. I just profoundly feel like it's the right thing to do, to have a block on how to pronounce it. But, you know, his Blue Destiny, or whatever the fuck his penis rocket is called and musk all these morons. But he. He was developing this land in a way that was like. It would have violated every zoning law. It would not have done anything for anybody in any way. And the deal, for reasons that I won't bother you with now, fell apart. And it was an incredible embarrassment for him. He didn't acknowledge it as a problem because there was then another swath of land where the old Penn train yards were, which is now where that whole Trump development is on the west side.

[39:12] Meg: Didn't they take his names down from it, though?

[39:14] Jessica: Well, no, no. Get this. So he has this giant plan, and he's even keeping the number of apartments. Cause he still has to best his father. Keep this in mind about him. A group of Westsiders, including celebrities you had, like Christopher Reeve and Ruth messenger, and, like, all of these people who were like, fuck, no. Like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And by the way, in between the failure of Television City and then trying to do this thing, he bought the plaza. Like, he did other things that we've talked about on this podcast that were, like his consolation prizes, but he really wanted to do this thing. And they blocked him. They blocked him beautifully. He couldn't do the tall, crazy building. And. And the whole thing was going to fall apart again because they weren't going to grant him the money. But then a Chinese bank came in, or Chinese consortium. Chinese, I feel like. I feel like Kramer. Chinese, Jerry. It's the Chinese. And they bankrolled it. And he wound up being able to, unlike the original deal where he was going to option the land, he is able to buy this land with this Chinese backing. So now he's gonna do this thing. But they block him in every way the city does. The city. And when Koch was mayor, he was like, over my dead body will Trump ever do anything at this point, Dinkins is now mayor and still doesn't like him, but there isn't that fury. Anyway. The short version of all of this is that the people who were in, I think it was called, like, the west side Coalition or something like that, they bargain with him. They're dealing because he owns the land. He's going to do something. And his architect had come up with something that was so ugly and so massive, like no one was gonna go for it. So this coalition, they come up with their own architect who still creates something, you know, wretched, but it's smaller, it's more manageable, and there's no giant penis tower. The way that it's described in the article that all of this went down is that they had him over a barrel. They had him cornered where, like, the amount of money that he was going to put into this and the amount of land that he was going to use, everything had been chopped, chopped, chopped and curtailed. But he couldn't get out of the deal because of the China Chinese bankers. Like, he was in a corner, and they had him, and they had picked their own architect, as I said. And they're in the lawyer's offices and they say, this is what we're going to agree to. And he says no. They say, then guess what? We're leaving and we're going to sue you. And there's like, we're going to make sure that you tank. And he had already had two business bankruptcies and he was facing a personal bankruptcy. So if this had happened, he would have had to declare a personal bankruptcy. Of the loss of the funds, I'm sure he had some collateral with the Chinese investors.

[42:21] Meg: So how does this line up with Atlantic City and all of that?

[42:25] Jessica: He did Atlantic City as his consolation prize along with Plaza Hotel while he was cooking all of this up. So, anyway, the point of it really is it's about the human behavior. They tell him, all right, we're leaving. He now knows he's fucked because there's no negotiating anymore. The negotiation is over. It's either he takes what they want or he has to declare bankruptcy. And he catches them. He says, no, I'll do it. And the way that he then flips the story in the Press is that it's his victory because he wanted to create a Trump land all along. So all of the conditions of it and all of the losses and all of the things that, that were personally disastrous to him didn't matter. It was, no, no publicly outwardly facing. I got to create what I wanted in this space. Even though everything that he did was on their terms, their architect, their size, their zoning, their everything, everything, everything. So this idea of like, no, that didn't happen. I'm a winner. Like all of this nonsense that's, that has this incredibly long history, but this thing with this development was a perfect example. And yes, you are correct. Once his presidency began, each of the buildings has their own board, and each of those boards voted to take his name off of it. You know, does he still have bragging rights? The article asks. And it's like, well, well, yeah, because he created this thing that is there. But the follow up was this. And this was really interesting. And now this comes back to what you were saying about, you know, get the immigrants out, you know, let this be America as this self contained unit. That Trump development has nothing to do with the rest of the city. It's like a walled city. It doesn't interact. It has some of its own resources within it. Like it's in grocery stores, like that. It is intentionally, and this is the way the article put it, an island on the island. And so that's the headspace to come back to the original point when people say, oh, really, you're in New York. How did you know this is how. And these litigations, all of these things were in the press constantly. And his litigations and his developments would take decades to come to fruition. So he was never silent and never gone. The other thing I was gonna say is, cause recently, I think it was even today, you know, he capitulated on the English tariffs, tariffs with Britain and this whole idea of I'd never lose because, no, this is really what I wanted to do. Everything that he's done with every country with the tariffs is that pivot that I'm talking about with the development of that Trump land that's on the west side Highway. It all makes sense. And I think that as a psychological study, rather than being like, you know, what a narcissistic piece of shit, which we all know is true, and, you know, short fingered vulgarian and all of those things, these three articles were like, oh, yeah, disabilities don't matter, age doesn't matter, race doesn't matter, humanity doesn't matter, ego matters. Money matters. But money only is a tool to express power. And I'm never gonna let my daddy be better than me. It's so pathetic. Really, it is. But these, I just. I was so sad.

[46:11] Meg: Little boy.

[46:12] Jessica: He no like what me. But anyway, please read these articles and we're gonna post them. It was fascinating reading. Surprisingly, there are multiple tie ins.

[46:34] Meg: I know. We just listed, like, eight of them.

[46:38] Jessica: Yes. So, like, the first, the first thing that we talked about was criminality. And then within criminality, we refined that down to. It's. It's this sense of being above the law, or the law just doesn't apply. It doesn't matter. It doesn't even exist. So we know that for both these Vietnamese gangs and Donald Trump. Perfect. But you said fake designer.

[47:04] Meg: I said bad taste.

[47:05] Jessica: Bad. You said bad taste. True. And what that immediately makes me think of is, you know, when he was busy trying to throw gold all over the city. Gild the city. Exactly, Exactly. Those. Those shiny, shiny, fake gold Rolexes are a perfect example. It's completely fake. It's worth nothing. It's gonna fall apart. Right. It's worth nothing. But for five seconds, you can feel like a big man. Enjoy your Rolex.

[47:32] Meg: Ew.

[47:34] Jessica: I'm sorry I said big man. It.